New plan to defund ObamaCare: Filibuster the House bill that … defunds ObamaCare

posted at 5:21 pm on September 20, 2013 by Allahpundit

I thought I misread this at first, but no, apparently that’s the plan. Having convinced the House to bite the bullet and pass a CR that defunds O-Care, the Cruz/Lee “defund” contingent in the Senate now has no choice but to filibuster it. As David Freddoso, an opponent of the Cruz strategy, puts it, “You need to prevent a vote on defunding Obamacare in order to defund Obamacare.” Here’s what Cruz said about it this morning:

“But the House was just step one. Step two is the Senate, where all accounts suggest Harry Reid plans to use procedural gimmicks to try to add funding back in for Obamacare.

“If Reid pursues this plan — if he insists on using a 50-vote threshold to fund Obamacare with a partisan vote of only Democrats — then I hope that every Senate Republican will stand together and oppose cloture on the bill in order to keep the House bill intact and not let Harry Reid add Obamacare funding back in.

“Now is a time for party unity; Senate Republicans should stand side-by-side with courageous House Republicans.

“Harry Reid needs 60 votes to approve his plan to fund Obamacare. If 41 Republicans stand strong and oppose cloture, they can defeat Reid’s plan to fund Obamacare. However, if Republicans waffle and vote for cloture, it will grease the skids for Reid’s plan to fund Obamacare. It’s pretty simple — any Republican who votes for cloture is voting to fund Obamacare.

I.e. any Republican who votes to bring the House’s defunding bill to the Senate floor is actually voting to fund ObamaCare. That’s the messaging that “defund” supporters are stuck with right now.

Everyone understand why Cruz has been forced into this position? It goes back to the procedural quirk that Byron York wrote about last night and that I excerpted at length this morning. When Reid first introduces the House’s “defund” CR, it’ll face a cloture vote on whether to proceed to a debate about it. That requires 60 votes, but that should be no problem. Republicans will vote yes because they support defunding O-Care and Democrats will vote yes because they know it’s a necessary step to passing their own “clean” CR that includes funding for the law. Once that vote is over, though, Reid can strip out the “defunding” part of the House bill and then pass the new “clean” CR with simple majority votes. Thus, the only opportunity the Cruz/Lee contingent will have to stop Democrats from passing their own CR is by opposing the initial cloture vote on the House bill — even though that puts them in the singularly unusual position of trying to block a measure that was passed by their own party, which they themselves cheered all the way through passage in the other chamber.

Now, serious question: Why would Reid care whether the House bill is filibustered? We’re headed for deadlock here between the House and Senate one way or another. If Dems succeed in invoking cloture on the House bill and then strip out the O-Care funding, just as everyone expects will happen, then the ball is back in Boehner’s court. Either he can hold firm for awhile and risk a shutdown or he can cave and pass Reid’s “clean” CR. If, on the other hand, Cruz and Lee succeed in filibustering the House bill, then the Senate will pass nothing and … we’ll still be facing a shutdown. Except now, instead of simply blaming Republicans for it, Democrats will add the curious detail that Republicans in the Senate ended up blocking their own party’s bill in order to make it happen. Even worse, a successful filibuster would mean that red-state Dems like Landrieu and Begich who are up for reelection wouldn’t have to take a very tough vote in favor of funding ObamaCare as part of their party’s “clean” CR. If you’re going to go to the mat and shut down the government over ObamaCare, at least make vulnerable incumbents from the other party sweat through it.

The virtue of the filibuster from the “defund” standpoint is, I guess, that it would take the decision on whether to cave out of Boehner’s hands and put it in the hands of Senate Republicans, who include the most ardent “defund” backers like Cruz and Lee. But that assumes that 41 of them would stick together to extend the shutdown indefinitely, which they surely wouldn’t. In fact, they almost certainly won’t get 41 even for the initial filibuster attempt, when Reid first brings the House bill to the floor. Shutdown skeptics like Coburn and McCain have lots of political cover to vote for cloture now: By voting against a filibuster, they can say that they voted to bring a bill that would have defunded ObamaCare to the floor. They’d rather have this in Boehner’s hands than Cruz’s. And Cruz, of course, understands all of this. He’s under no illusions that the filibuster idea will succeed. I think his pushing for it is aimed mainly at his critics in the House who’ve been grousing that he expects them to do the heavy lifting on his “defund” scheme. Fine, Cruz seems to be saying; if they want me to be the main obstacle to a “clean” CR rather than John Boehner, I’ll try to block it in the Senate even if it means doing something as awkward as filibustering a House bill I support. But it’ll fail and he knows it, and Boehner will be back on the hot seat soon enough. What he’s doing here is simply showing that he’s willing to take some heat himself before Reid’s scheme succeeds and the spotlight shifts back to the House.

Here he is yesterday vowing to use every procedural measure he could to block O-Care. He wasn’t kidding.

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What do you call a Congress that refuses to put themselves on the same program, a President that gives Big Cronies waivers, unions that say “WTF!!!??? We didn’t sign on for THAT!”, and a majority of Americans that consistently poll against it?

Can the pass the CR without cutting off debate? Is there a legally binding way before cloture to disallow procedural shenanigans? I mean, Cruz is a Senator, I trust he knows what he’s doing, but if this is step 2, I don’t know what step 3 is. :(

Rufi on September 20, 2013 at 6:38 PM

That’s what filibuster is for, if there is no cloture, then Reid/Hussein have no bill. The title of this thread is very deceiving, Cruz is only going to filibuster IF REID strikes HusseinCare defunding from House CR. If defunding is included, Cruz sits on the sideline and votes Yes.

I wish AP was smart enough to understand the issue rather than passing along LIBERAL LIE.

Drive-by Troll, No where in the linked story is there any statement that Cruz ‘applied’ to rescind his Canadian citizenship-nor that he made such a statement. As a matter of fact, you (later) quoted that –according to The News’ sources– it cant be done.

So, regarding “If you want to watch the smallest news network on your cable box at the earliest morning hour you might see me for about 14 seconds. Not great, not bad. But I’m working at it.”

Good luck with that. (psst, you seriously damage your credibility by the posts you vomit.)

The House is driving the train because only the House can originate appropriations. However, a lengthy speaking filibuster gets the GOP message out to the public in a compelling Mr. Smith goes to Washington way that even the Democrat media will cover. No one will care why the filibuster happened.

I hope the Republicans have the ads ready. I would love to think they’re smart enough to know they can’t win this fight, but they at least put up a fight instead of just rolling over. If they do that then, and only then, can they roll out the ads, “As you’re still trying to figure out if you have insurance, if you still have a doctor, if you can get your prescriptions at the local pharmacy, how much all of this is costing you, remember, the Republican Party tried to stop this bill, a bill they had no input on and a bill they have always opposed. The Democrats say you’re going to love it, we don’t believe them. If you don’t, please vote Republican so we can straighten this bill out. Either we’ll do it in 2014, with Obama in office, or in 2016, with Obama officially retired.”

Fine, Cruz seems to be saying; if they want me to be the main obstacle to a “clean” CR rather than John Boehner, I’ll try to block it in the Senate even if it means doing something as awkward as filibustering a House bill I support. But it’ll fail and he knows it, and Boehner will be back on the hot seat soon enough. What he’s doing here is simply showing that he’s willing to take some heat himself before Reid’s scheme succeeds and the spotlight shifts back to the House.

That’s what filibuster is for, if there is no cloture, then Reid/Hussein have no bill. The title of this thread is very deceiving, Cruz is only going to filibuster IF REID strikes HusseinCare defunding from House CR. If defunding is included, Cruz sits on the sideline and votes Yes.

I wish AP was smart enough to understand the issue rather than passing along LIBERAL LIE.

Senate defunds HusseinCare, no filibuster. Easy.

riddick on September 20, 2013 at 7:20 PM

Sorry, but AP is correct on the procedure. The cloture vote takes place on the House bill. If cloture is invoked, there can be no filibuster because debate is limited to 30 hours total. It is at that point Reid offers the substitute bill with “defunding” stripped out, and probably more spending put in.

Think of the bill as a vessel. Right now it is full of the House plan, but the vote is on the vessel, not its contents. So unless cloture is agreed, the bill can’t proceed in any form, but if it is agreed, Reid pours out the House bill and refills the vessel with his own poison.

Yeah – I thought Paul’s filibuster was awesome. This one should be too.

gophergirl on September 20, 2013 at 6:38 PM

However, a lengthy speaking filibuster gets the GOP message out to the public in a compelling Mr. Smith goes to Washington way that even the Democrat media will cover. No one will care why the filibuster happened.

Bart DePalma on September 20, 2013 at 7:44 PM

Yes. This ought to be the takeaway from this thread. It is the reason for the filibuster. Of course Reid will collect the votes to shut off the filibuster and pass his “clean CR”s. But keep sending Reid’s CR’s back to the Senate, Boehner, and force him re-open debate, re-vote, and re-send his CRs over and over. And let a thousand filibusters bloom.

I know, the House and Senate rules are the enemy of the people. The seniority system in these bodies are also the enemy of the people. You can’t get a handle on them, it is so annoying. You can’t make Harry Reid bring up numerous House passed bills that would help the county. You can’t get single issue bills to the floor without the crap sandwich attached. A lot of people don’t even know what voting for cloture means, and here where it sounds like we want the bill to be debated…we want debate right…we can’t debate the bill because Harry Reid has some mysterious single power to change the bill so we have to vote for it to find out what is in it?

We’re headed for deadlock here between the House and Senate one way or another.

Not necessarily. Not if enough public pressure builds, and enough purple democrats cross over to defund. That’s what a fight is really about — changing the Narrative. Republicans never fight to change a Narrative or gain ground, they fight only to look good, to keep up appearances. If that can change, we can win.

Read Andrew McCarthy’s piece. We lose these fights not because Obama’s tough or a particularly good politician, but because he KNOWS we’ll cave. And we know he’s not tough — he’s just proved it in Syria. Make HIM cave.

I think his pushing for it is aimed mainly at his critics in the House who’ve been grousing that he expects them to do the heavy lifting on his “defund” scheme

Don’t forget the intra-party nonsense in all of this as well.

Boehner knows exactly what’s going on and has the potential to occur. He knew that forcing Cruz into a position of filibustering the House bill would be a dead end. Cruz’s original statement the House has to hold together was an acknowledgement that not only did he know this, but knew the preferred strategy was to have it go back to the House.

Ultimately, Boehner wants to hang this entire strategy around Cruz’s and conservatives neck by getting the process to work against them.

It’s a devious strategy by Boehner- where ultimately he has tried to give the appearance he is supporting the de-funding process or rather “giving in”, then has the Democrats, et al help him defeat it and make supporters look foolish.

I never bought for one second Boehner supported this process. He’s the devil in our party that would rather watch others fail in order to embark on his personal, destructive agenda.

You want to know why Republicans are being relegated to the water closet. Here is a perfect example. This isn’t “working together. It’s working together in order to gain a foothold in the internecine warfare.

AP, you simply don’t get it at this point. This is all about SQUISHY REPUBLICANS in the Senate- who will be forced to go along with Harry Reid to stop the filibuster. And, trust me, they WILL catch tremendous heat- even primary challenges- for going along with Reid. This is about the LONG GAME of getting people with spine in the Senate, where the GOP has ALWAYS surrendered

Like the British, the Founding Fathers understood that the power of the purse in Congress was indispensable to checking the president’s temptation to concoct excuses for war to aggrandize executive power and to achieve popular unity. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution declares, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” James Madison, father of the Constitution, acclaimed the power of the purse as an invincible congressional weapon for redressing grievances against the executive.

The president cannot veto congressional inaction in refusing to appropriate funds; and, he cannot spend a dime on the military or otherwise unless Congress affirmatively passes an appropriations bill.

The Senate will strip the bill and send it back to the House. The House in turn should require that no exemptions be given to any employer or union without approval of Congress. Moreover, a deadline for the employer mandate should be January 1 2015, or the entire law goes away.

The Senate will strip the bill and send it back to the House. The House in turn should require that no exemptions be given to any employer or union without approval of Congress. Moreover, a deadline for the employer mandate should be January 1 2015, or the entire law goes away.

With absolutely no help from the “the bloviater in chief” Bill O’Reilly who has for the last 3 nights screamed , laughed , smirked and scorned anyone who even dares mention the word “defund”. He insists it will NEVER happen so why are we even waisting time. Of course the talking points parade behind him claiming…….THIS IS THE LAW OF THE LAND! Do not worry Bill as long as you keep it up I am sure you will get that OBAMA interview you have so OPINED for!

If Republicans can’t defund Obamacare then it should be fully funded with language that the Executive Branch may offer no waivers, no variations, no changes in execution of the law from what Congress has passed. And put a 10 year penalty on that so that doing so is a felony and apply it across the entire chain of command that approves any changes, and that chain of command starts at the WH with the President who is responsible for the actions of the Executive Branch.

Tell D’s that you have had it with the game playing, the favoritism and with funding of crony friends via this law and that such things must stop. And if the Executive Branch cannot perform the functions as given in the law, then it is to suspend all efforts to enforce the law and come back to Congress to tell what is actually needed to do so.

That means if the exchanges don’t work, the law is suspended.

If there are problems with roll-out with States that want it, the law is suspended.

Any hiccup and the law is suspended.

The Democrats wanted this and the Republicans should now force all of those who support Obamacare to ‘do the right thing’ and get the Executive Branch to enforce the law fully and in all parts as given or the entire law, top to bottom, including its add-ons, kick-backs and expansion for student loans gets suspended. Then the President can submit the list of particulars for what it takes to fully make the program work AS WRITTEN BY DEMOCRATS WHO PASSED IT.

That will get the law suspended far faster than defunding and bypass all the stupid President Tricks Obama is using and put Democrats on the line to fully support what they said they wanted or to explain why such a lovely law isn’t worth ENFORCING.

Sorry, but AP is correct on the procedure. The cloture vote takes place on the House bill. If cloture is invoked, there can be no filibuster because debate is limited to 30 hours total. It is at that point Reid offers the substitute bill with “defunding” stripped out, and probably more spending put in.

Think of the bill as a vessel. Right now it is full of the House plan, but the vote is on the vessel, not its contents. So unless cloture is agreed, the bill can’t proceed in any form, but if it is agreed, Reid pours out the House bill and refills the vessel with his own poison.

Adjoran on September 20, 2013 at 8:27 PM

No, As in ABSOLUTELY NO! Don’t read AP’s crappy take on the issue, which is a liberal talking point.

The ONLY reason Cruz will filibuster is IF REID strikes out the HusseinCare defunding and proceeds with the rest of the CR. NO FILIBUSTER TO TAKE PLACE IF HOUSE BILL IS CLOTURED INTACT.

Amazing how supposed conservatives go into conniption fit based on a liberal spread BS and run with it. Ap really needs to bone up on reading comprehension, but then again this post once again shows him a liberal lite, not the first time, either.

Cruz has absolutely no reason to filibuster the House bill. He’s the one who made it happen, NO ONE ELSE.

I read that according to Senate Rules there can only be 30 hours of filibuster and then there is a majority vote. This from a story by Byron York on this:

But couldn’t Cruz and his allies stand up and stage a talking filibuster, at least to put the process on hold? In fact, Senate rules, which Reid will enforce, will limit the debate on the measure to 30 hours, divided evenly between the parties. That gives Republicans 15 hours, to be divided between 46 GOP senators. That’s not a lot of time. It’s possible the Republican caucus could decide to allow Cruz to filibuster for an extended period of time. But it’s unlikely, given the other senators who will likely want to speak out on the issue. In March, the Rand Paul filibuster went on for nearly 13 hours; don’t look for something like that to happen this time.

So Republicans don’t have the votes to actually filibuster a continuing resolution, and they don’t have the rules on their side to stage a talking filibuster. Supporters of defunding are bound to be disappointed. But the Senate aide says no one should be surprised. “This is not a gimmick or a scheme,” says the aide. “It is Rule 22 of the U.S. Senate. Everybody knew this. This is an existing rule. It is taught in Senate class when you do your orientation. It is not a surprise. Nobody sprung it on him [Sen. Cruz].”

You seem to be the only one that thinks that Cruz can wait until after the bill is amended in order to filibuster it.

Everyone else is saying that if there’s no immediate filibuster and cloture is invoked, then the Senate can vote on a version of the bill after democrats strike the defunding language. In this vote, only a 51 majority would be required.

From listening to the Levin/Cruz audio clip it appears our hopes lie on Boehner sending back funding bills to the Senate for basically funding one dept. of govt. at a time. I Hope I have got that much right, not sure.
If that is the case what will motivate Reid to pass this along to zero and why will either one sign on? I am a bit confused.
Seems to me with the press in their pocket they will just keep blaming us and hope things get bad in the country so they can blame us even more.
I think we need to remember none of what they blame us for has to be true it just has to be seen on tv or in print for LIVs to believe.

If Dems succeed in invoking cloture on the House bill and then strip out the O-Care funding, just as everyone expects will happen, then the ball is back in Boehner’s court. Either he can hold firm for awhile and risk a shutdown or he can cave and pass Reid’s “clean” CR.

Can someone more familiar with Congressional procedure explain why this is true? Why can’t the House simply re-amend defunding back into the Senate’s amended HR and send it back to the Senate?

Why is it always obstruction when Republicans refuse to compromise key issues and never Democrat Obstruction when they refuse to compromise? It seems a given that republicans are at fault, always regardless of any actions taken or not taken by the left…

BERLIN—The elections set to take place here in Germany Sunday are expected to turn largely on the country’s solid economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handling of the European debt crisis and social issues like women’s role in the work force. But add to that plate one more thing: Germans don’t want the government telling them what to eat.

In what could be a cautionary tale for First Lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to tweak Americans’ diets, Germans look set to punish the Green Party for urging that public cafeterias go meat-free on a designated “Veggie Day” each week in order to help the environment and reduce cruelty to animals. Borrowing colorfully from English, German newspaper Bild described public reaction to the idea as a “shitstorm.”

I don’t think this is the right strategy. The defund bill will have to pass eventually. The Republicans just look bipolar by filibustering their own bill. I get the reasoning, but it’s terrible optics. And, unfortunately, optics matter. A lot. Especially to Republicans who don’t have a PR firm (the media) as big as the Democrats.

Yes. Read what Palin and Beck are saying, I can’t imagine they are “confused” and somehow do not understand this as well as “Rove and Co.”.

Simple strategy, as already pointed out above, and for some reason going “woosh!” over so many heads. But then again, with all the RINOs on radio and TV, and print, being so disingenuous, OR STUPID AND LYING in some cases (Rove, AP, Wallace, etc.), no wonder there is confusion.

House bill intact voted on in Senate? No filibuster.

Reid amends House bill to exclude HusseinCare defunding? Filibuster to stop the vote (cloture to proceed to actual final vote requires 60 votes).

Not that difficult to understand. Senator Lee this morning said there are 46 votes against almost guaranteed Reid amended House bill. This means that A) there seem to be at least 2-3 liberals in step with GOP Senate when one excludes McLaim and Fluke to make this a “bipartisan” effort and B) there are enough pro-filibuster votes when Reid amends the bill.

Cruz is playing at least one step ahead these days, thus his statement about “filibuster” since Reid won’t put the House bill up for a cloture vote.